Being England football manager is never an easy task.

I read today the views of a major football agent, talking last year, about the difference in footballers today compared to those who played even 15 years ago.

Forget the fact that football is now such a hugely international game, with English Premier League teams regularly fielding teams without more than one or two English players.

No, as the agent pointed out and I have witnessed first hand over the last decade or so, footballers have become more and more detached from the fans who support then and live like pop stars now.

At the top level, drinking in the same pubs as the fans who have just been cheering you and wandering around their local town has given way to blacked out car windows, gated houses and minders. No wonder they are so popular with the paparazzi.

With managers now earning almost as much as players, and the ‘England Expects’ moniker dished out ahead of any international competition, the focus on England and its manager is equally unrelenting.

Fabio Capello, the austere dictatorial Italian, needed to get off to a good start as England coach not just because of the pressure on his job but because as an Italian without a huge profile over here, he needed to set a marker for the type of success he would instil.

Eight consecutive wins in World Cup qualification has done just that, and Capello has had a deservedly easy ride from the media for his managerial skills.

The first foreigner to manage England, Sven Goran Eriksson, enjoyed a colourful personal life, something that was never going to be the case with the less flamboyant Capello.

I met Capello a few years ago when working in Italy and he was without doubt the most single-minded, professional coach I have ever encountered. Salacious gossip and misbehaviour is just not his style.

Apparently, the FA wrote to every newspaper editor last year explaining Capello’s wish for privacy and while he would provide ample England-related interviews, there would be no such co-operation with lifestyle magazines wanting to get to know the personal aspect of his life.

So when photos of he and his wife covered in medicinal mud while on holiday appeared in the News of the World and the Daily Mail last weekend, I was more than a little surprised.

The Press Complaints Commission, so often criticised for a lack of teeth, upheld Capello’s complaint about the pictures being published this week and both newspapers have paid out substantial sums to charity as compensation.

It’s a big step-change for the PCC, who have refused privacy claims in the past.

It means that high profile figures are now permitted to enjoy their privacy – and in the case of Capello there almost certainly will never be any misdemeanour that might compromise that.

The irony is that during the summer, Capello seemed to have no problem with some staged photos being taken of him while on holiday, which you can see here.

The media will note the double standard and
But if things start to go wrong for Capello and his players start to falter, don’t be surprised if the tabloids go after him just that little bit more aggressively than even they might have done so anyway. 

 
 
Formula One is like marmite –you either love it or hate it.

One the one hand, you have an international tournament that provides glamour, drama and excitement like no other sport.

On the other, you have the argument that it is all about the machine, not the driver. Ferrari’s failure to continue winning every season following Michael Schumacher’s retirement may raise questions about that but Lewis Hamilton, so dominant over the last couple of seasons, has faltered alarmingly despite his obvious talent.

His team, McLaren, have had their problems, of course. They were found guilty of viewing documents from rivals Ferrari and fined heavily and then again admitted to lying at the start of this season when Hamilton finished on the podium.

This week, Renault Formula One team has released team bosses Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds over a deliberate crash by Nelson Piquet Junior, who had left the team in August.

Piquet admitted that he had crashed to help senior driver Fernando Alonso last season in Singapore, prompting legal proceedings against the Brazilian for damaging their reputation.

It should never have come to that, of course.

Given the recent departure of Briatore and Symonds, clearly Renault knew that they were guilty – and their admittance of the charges underlines that.

Briatore, whose reputation for being combatant both at Renault and Queens Park Rangers FC has made him a fearsome figure, is likely to have to leave elite sport altogether now, and perhaps that is for the best.

That Renault have reversed their initial stance underlines how seriously they take these accusations and how damaging it could be for their future to be found guilty while trying to conceal the truth.

Former Formula One driver Eddie Irvine said today that every team tried to stretch and bend the rules wherever possible, which hardly helps the credibility of the sport.

Will Renault still have a team in 2010? Only the FIA, the sport’s governing body, know what they will do.

For the good of Formula One, a punishment of the utmost severity for actions which ultimately affected the course of a race weekend must be considered.

And for Renault, the slow job of restoring their reputation must be as comprehensive as possible with charitable initiatives, new codes of conduct, open and honest dialogue with every stakeholder.

Time is a healer and Formula One may be very separate to the consumer market, but Renault sales may be affected by the reputation of a company who showed no respect for the rules they proclaimed to support.
 
 
I’ve noticed recently that a number of the journalists working for The Observer newspaper have started being bylined in The Guardian, its weekday sister newspaper.

These are dark days for major newspaper titles, which is ironic given the continuing thirst for news, entertaining stories and articles that we seem to crave in as many different ways as possible.

Rumours that The Observer may be closing have gathered pace in recent weeks and when staff journalists start to work across both titles, it does not bode well.

The threat hanging over The Observer comes quickly on the heels of the news that The London Paper is closing soon.

It underlines how the use of smart phones, citizen journalism, instant news and a wide range of media outlets above and beyond those we would conventionally think of is making it harder and harder for hacks to survive.

A lot of the problems come from advertising of course, which has suffered so much during the economic downturn.

When I was a journalist, advertising department staff used to say ‘You write the stories and we’ll pay for the running of the newspaper’ and that is undoubtedly true.

You only have to look at stunning magazines such as Vogue or GQ and see how packed full of adverts they are to realise that it is the ad departments rather than the cover price which pays to keep publications running.

Rupert Murdoch, whether it is because his titles are generally becoming less profitable or because he feels nothing should be free, is planning to start charging for online content, while The Economist is planning to charge for all online content.

Whether this will turn readers off or not, time will tell, but with a plethora of news and information sources available now, especially in this world of social networking and Web 2.0, I remain to be convinced that charging for web content will ever be the norm.

From a public relations perspective, losing a valuable title narrows the options for exposure for clients.

But there is an irony that us ‘spin doctors’ need the press so much while the media is losing some of the variety and diversity which makes the British media so special.

The Observer, along with The Guardian, has long held a left of centre standpoint but it is also exceptional when it comes to the arts, not to mention its investigative and in-depth reporting and features.

It would be a tragedy if the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper is closed by the Scott Trust.

The National Union of Journalists has organised a public meeting entitled ‘Stand up for The Observer’ http://www.standupfortheobserver.org.uk/ to chaired by Peep Show’s David Mitchell on September 21.

For the good of the Observer’s journalists, balance in the media and in order to retain a British institution, I sincerely hope the campaign is a success. 
 
 
The power of the media is a curious thing.

Sometimes it can create madness and mayhem out of the most trivial of incidents.

Sometimes it can lead the fight for justice and the common good.

Thankfully, in the case of the Manchester United abusive chants, Amazon has withdrawn the offending album/MP3.

It took them four days and only after, it seems, Arsenal indicated that the offending chant was defamatory with all the legal implications that selling the MP3 could entail.

Media coverage of the chant's presence on Amazon has been widespread over the last few days and the wise move from a communications point of view would have been to remove the offending and offensive item immediately.

Even Manchester United criticsed the chant and its own fans for making such unfounded comments towards a rival manager.

I find it surprising, I must say, that Amazon missed the opportunity to take that stance without the need for the widespread media outrage and official Arsenal to provoke them into action.

The fact that they say in their statement that they needed to be told that the chant MP3 was defamatory without being able to work it out themselves; and that they would consider it censorship to remove the item had the threat of defamation not been made apparent seems incredible for an organisation the size of Amazon.

As the market leader, Amazon won't lose too many customers over this PR error, but I hope they learn the lesson that for a 69p clip that has a limited audience and a huge outrage value, they have damaged their reputation in a way that was entirely avoidable.
 
 
Competitive prices, a wide range of stock and a user-friendly interface have made Amazon one of the greatest success stories of the internet revolution.

While the millions of items Amazon sells make it difficult to keep a track of everything, one item in particular is going to cause it a huge amount of damage unless it acts swiftly.

I have to admit at this point that I am an Arsenal fan and proud of that fact.

I remember, however, watching games in the late 1970s and early 1980s and having so called ‘fans’ shouting monkey noises in front of me at their own players.

These were fans in the seats, not the terraces, and looked more educated than the average supporter of those days. Which made their idiotic ‘humour’ all the more distressing and despicable.

I will hold my hands up and admit that I too have booed or jeered opposing fans or managers in moments of frustration when an incident has provoked my ire.

But I will not nor will I stand for anyone around me making racist, homophobic or unacceptably abusive comments or chants. It’s just not on.

There were rumours when Arsenal’s manager, Arséne Wenger, first arrived at the club, that he was resigning immediately because of alleged accusations against him.

He stood on the front steps of Highbury Stadium and dared anyone to repeat them and the hoax was over.

That hasn’t stopped fans continuing to chant such slanderous abuse in Wenger’s direction – and now Amazon is selling a chant Mpeg which, while not identifying Wenger, echoes the fan sentiments in no uncertain terms.

One fan who has complained received a reply which referred to ‘freedom of expression…Amazon.co.uk believes it is censorship not to offer for sale certain titles with repugnant or distasteful content, and we would be rightly criticised if we did so. As a result, we will continue to make controversial works available in the UK and everywhere else, except where they are prohibited by law.”

So that basically means if anyone wants to sell something backing or supporting bombers or child kidnappers or suchlike will be acceptable unless banned by law?

The worst thing any company can do is allow itself to be seen to be motivated by money and the 69p the track costs is going to pale into insignificance compared to the bad publicity that will come its way.

Once the powers that be at Amazon realise their error, they should take immediate action to remove the offending clip from their catalogue.

In truth, all right-thinking football fans and the general public will abhor anything that not only crosses the boundaries of respectability, but shoots them down and spits on them as it does so.

Reputations can be lost swiftly when the public is alerted to what most rational people will consider to be an error of judgement.

If Amazon know what is good for them, they will issue a statement confirming the removal of the offending clip and vowing to take more care in assessing whether what they sell is acceptable or goes beyond the bounds of decency as is the case in this instance.